Future-proof Flashpunk alternatives


#1

I really enjoy making stuff with flashpunk (made some Ludum Dare games with it)

However, it has it’s problems - mainly performance-wise, but also neither Flashpunk nor Flash is actively developed anymore.

So, what other engines/frameworks are generally similar to flashpunk and can be learned easily, while still being able to compile for web as well as mobile and so forth.


(Martí Angelats i Ribera) #2

It’s true that Flash is decading. Actually plataforms like Youtube no longer use it, and Mozilla Firefox disabed it by default.

The first thing it comes to my head is Haxe. Multiplatform and there is a similar library called HaxePunk, which started as a port of FlashPunk to Haxe.


PD: Right now i’m trying to develop a FlashPunk 2. It’s not official (at the moment) but i hope in a few months it will be out.


(FNX) #3

I’ve switched to Axel some time ago, it’s Flixel based, features stage3d but it works with normal spritesheet so it avoids the pain to switch to the texture atlas approach. I had to make some modifications to the core engine to fit my needs and there’s practically no community behind, but it has almost all the features we are used to with Flashpunk. :smile:


#4

thx, I’ve looked at your suggestions.

However: Haxe (and Axel) seem like more or less dying projects to me. Sure - they might be nice to work with but I really don’t want to switch from one dead thing to the next.

I haven’t tried any of the more user-friendly game making kits, like Stencyl, Construct 2, Game Maker and so on. In your experience - which one of those would be the best to transition to from flashpunk?

I’m asking this, because they seem well supported and pretty straight forward; and since I’m working alone I don’t really want to spend weeks to learn something like Unity (especially since I want to stay 2D for the time being)


(Martí Angelats i Ribera) #5

You can always go with other languages:

  • HTML5 + CSS3 + Javascript for Web.
  • Java for Android (you can also add C/C++ code using the official NDK).
  • ObjectiveC++ for IOS.
  • etc.

The problem with this is that i don’t know libraries about them.

Another point is that Unity3D actually allows to make 2D projects (feature added a long time ago).


#6

the thing with other languages is that I’d not only depend on the language developer, but also on whatever library/framework I’d be using. also, I’d like to use something specifically made for making games - so I thought I’ll give those “game makers” a shot


(Zouhair Elamrani Abou Elassad) #7

… It’s true that the era of Flash is coming to an end, but the way i see it, Flash is still one of the majors software platforms, specially when it comes to Gaming, i heard that there are some new HTML/JS frameworks that show huge potentials such as Phaser and Crafty JS, but i think the HTML/JS gaming platforms are still immature.


(Jean) #8

HTML/JS “engines” are very weak today. There’s even the implementation of WebGL, but that got almost abandoned and most things simply doesn’t work on most browsers.

NPAPI will get abandoned by Chromium(core of the Google Chrome) very soon, so Unity Web Plugin will not work aswell, although Unity has a dozen of choices to build your game. Game Maker has a ridicously easy to use coding language, but it doesn’t allow you to test the best of it for free unlike Unity.

So, you should either stick around with Game Maker since it’s easy, or with Unity since the community is huge so learning shouldn’t be hard aswell.


(rostok) #9

I am hoping quietly that http://jangaroo.net/ will allow me to convert all AS3 codebase into JS one day. I have seen some working example of Flashpunk game made with this into HTML5/JS but it was really very very simple, and was long time ago. Yet, I think it is worth to keep tracking this technology.


#10

How about Openfl ? It seems it has active community